Posted on 07/15/2004 6:41:59 AM PDT by kjvail
– 1 – Charles M. de Nunzio: Variations on a Theme, Op. 45 [CC&AC Draft Edition II-1b (1998)] Variations on a Theme: INTRODUCTION T HE END OF THE SECOND MILLENNIUM is a time of grave distress for Catholics who value the truths, precepts, and traditions of the only Church founded by our Lord, Jesus Christ. Time and again, they have been forced to suffer on account of developments occasioned by the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath. The litany of horrors is all too familiar: sacrilegious and even invalid Masses, the unabashed promotion of heretical ideas, the toleration and even encouragement of perverse lifestyles, apologies for so-called crimes supposedly committed by the Church in “benighted” bygone days. Many of those charged with sacred duties in this country manifest a consistent hatred of Catholic tradition and seek to exterminate it. Countless appeals to higher authorities for redress of these wrongs go callously unheeded, and no wonder: these authorities are among the chief perpetrators. Even the Popes of the post-Vatican II era have been derelict in their duties in this regard, promoting the principles which allow liberal agitators a false sense of justification for everything they do and taking gravely insufficient measures to rectify the scandal. Historian John Rao noted in his excellent 1993 address, “Why Catholics Cannot Defend Themselves,” that Catholics are committing cultural as well as religious suicide. “They recite the tawdry slogans of their [liberal, pluralist] conquerors, beg instruction in their masters’ religion and customs and burn incense before a host of ‘heroes’ who are non-Catholic at best or vehement enemies of the Christian God and man at worst.” In the United States, one of the primary characteristics shared by the liberals destroying the Church is their fanatical, obsessive preoccupation with conforming both themselves and the Church to the norms of contemporary American society. These agitators have succeeded in turning Catholic parishes and institutions into just so many more mouthpieces of a new official American religion (in fact if not in name), “political correctness,” a religion complete with its own ritual, hagiography, a coherent set of demonic dogmas, an evangelistic drive, and a merciless inquisition to ensure people’s subjection. (Visit any American “Catholic” college for proof.) Even if they sometimes affirm a sentimental humanitarianism that loudly decries things like the exploitation of Third World child-laborers (while yet ignoring Communist atrocities), these liberal “Catholics” generally embrace our society’s “self-affirming” materialistic hedonism. The prevailing “pop culture,” glorifying “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll,” humanism, socialist internationalism, feminism, and sodomy, belongs to them as to anyone else. Fr. Andrew Greeley’s remarks toward the end of The Catholic Experience (1967) reflect their complaint that the Catholic Church in the United States has not been acculturated thoroughly enough. The Catholic population has become Americanized. The ecclesiastical structure has yet to follow suit. It missed the marvelous oppor tunities presented to it in its past, and the Americanizers, whatever their theoretical triumphs, were not always practically successful.... [While President, John F. Kennedy] sat in judgment on this failure, probably without meaning to do so.... What he said in effect to American Catholicism was, “Your people are changing, the world in which they are living is changing, and you are slowly but surely losing touch with them because they have become thoroughly American, and you, for all your patriotism and loyalty, have not yet become American in the methods with which you organize and govern your Church.... For all your devout Americanism, you have not had the nerve to become thoroughly American as an ecclesiastical in stitution . You have not had the courage to listen to the prophecy of Carroll, England, and Gibbons [notable 19th century American Catholic bishops].... If history teaches you anything, it is that when you cease to become relevant to the needs and the problems and the opportunities and the expectations of your people then in the lon g run you will cer tain ly lose them”.... T he election of a Catholic President has provided the American Church with another opportunity of the sort that it experienced in 1820 with John England and in 1885 with the American ists. But th is opportun ity could well be the last one. Interestingly, these radicals can claim that in embracing American culture as they find it, they are only doing what their more “progressive” American Catholic forebears also did. Catholic conservatives would object that it is dishonest to equate the America of yesteryear with today’s perverse developments. “Real” American culture, they insist, is about God, Family, and Country, as Americans generally accepted prior to the 1960's. There are even attempts to prove the essential Catholicity of this culture, especially in its political ideals. According to partisans of such a view, – 2 – Charles M. de Nunzio: Variations on a Theme, Op. 45 [CC&AC Draft Edition II-1b (1998)] the only reason our culture deteriorated is because of the deliberate actions of satanic conspirators. Hence, they lay incredible stress upon exposing the machinations of the Illuminati, the Rockefellers, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the major foundations, the New Age Movement, and other nefarious groups. Those who place sole blame on the conspiracies, however, must come to understand that there are other factors involved — factors which give the manipulators their strength. For even in the “good old days,” American culture was punctuated by rhetoric about “liberty,” “equality,” “the pursuit of [material] happiness,” the “rugged individual” always pushing westward because his was the country with the “manifest destiny” to be the new “city on the hill.” Most of these ideas have some legitimate place in the Catholic mindset, but surely not as abstract ideals which constitute the focal points of a culture’s values. Old American rhetoric is the language of liberalism with a noticeably Calvinist flavor, whereas today’s vocabulary comes from an absolutized, dogmatized liberalism like grain alcohol straight from the bottle. It is not unfair to claim a kindred bond between the two strains. The “politically correct” American culture does have, in its principles, substantial likenesses to the so-called traditional version — it is simply truer to liberal logic than the older version. What accounts for the latter’s inconsistency is a fairly strong remnant of Christian culture that seemed to coexist peaceably with American culture’s liberal elements. “Doctrinaire solutions somehow are uncongenial to the American resolution,” observed Protestant writer Martin Marty in 1963. He meant here that Americans, unlike Europeans, were loathe to take principles to their logical consequences. Hence, in countries like France, the Christian and liberal world-views clashed terribly (as is indeed proper), whereas in America they did not, because the Anglo- American mind favored rather a “working” compromise. This is probably why American Catholics in former times never caught onto the cultural self-contradiction. Appearances deceive; what matters is the objective truth of the matter, a truth that is now visible in all its ugly clarity. If Catholics today fail to see the essential incompatibility of the liberal American cultural ideals with their Faith, there are two basic explanations. One, they may lack the solid education that permits them to understand the social consequences of the truths of our religion; while regrettable, this can be remedied. Or two, they allow their culturallybased prejudices to overrule any critical reflections — and this is indefensible. To be sure, the state of the Church and world today is essentially a problem of the supernatural order, and its solution will come ultimately through supernatural means. Yet, there is a major truth wrapped up in that Catholic axiom, “Grace does not take away nature but perfects it.” Sometimes God suspends the laws of nature and allows grace to work miracles, but this is the rare exception. Divine Providence is usually manifest through ordinary natural causes. Human nature is thus effectively the foundation for the supernatural life, and that is why Catholic wisdom respects it. A solid grounding in the truths of the natural order is therefore essential to a good grasp of the dogmas of Faith and a genuinely sound spiritual life. One property of human nature is that it cannot attain its perfection apart from the cooperation of other human beings, which is why man has been called a “social animal” since antiquity. There is one word, “culture” (from the Latin cultus), that is used to mean both the process of this perfection through social interaction and the system of societal norms and customs which, in theory, are supposed to help bring about this perfection. A person naturally imbibes his society’s values without much, if any, critical reflection (at least in early years). If cultural norms and customs respect common sense and submit to the dictates of the true religion, then they are capable of disposing people all the better to save their immortal souls. In fact, the primary obligation of a temporal social order is to clear the natural obstacles to this disposition as much as it can. On the other hand, to the degree that a society’s norms and customs are based on falsehood — either religious, philosophical, or both — then so far is the understanding and practice of the true Faith inhibited. Unless Catholics take decisive steps to counteract their influence, they are liable to accept certain assumptions that hinder or destroy their Catholic life. In the United States, this misguided acceptance was widespread, as Dr. Rao attested: “Those Catholics and that Catholic Church which were given a full share in national affairs were so defused by the Americanist Religion [i.e. pluralism] that they bore little or no relation to the believers and the Faith that the United States had disliked [in the 19th century].” Especially in societies that do not officially endorse the true religion, Catholics must be given a cultural vision compatible with the doctrines and customs of Faith, if these are to be understood and applied properly. People must be taught to understand the social implications of Catholic doctrine even when they cannot yet be fully implemented. Undoubtedly, a “Catholic society” will not be erected overnight when there are too many individuals who * This is not to be confused with the set of propositions Pope Leo XIII condemned in 1899 as “American ism,” yet those ideas are definitely kindred spirits with — if not actually inspired by — the “Amer icanist” civic philosophy. – 3 – Charles M. de Nunzio: Variations on a Theme, Op. 45 [CC&AC Draft Edition II-1b (1998)] do not truly submit to Christ the King, but this does not excuse Catholics from doing what they can to further that goal in the meantime. Catholics cannot be satisfied with a society built partially on lies, even if that society gives them liberty to practice their Faith in a rudimentary way. Contrary to one of the most basic assumptions of the modern mind, man is not meant to segregate his practice of Faith from the conduct of his life otherwise. It is unnatural, let alone un-Catholic, to do this kind of “compartmentalizing.” To repeat, Faith and society must be integrated — not only because the rights of God demand it, but also because human nature demands it. Now, it is not enough for Catholics to know and practice the Faith themselves: they are to spread it to others, for “there shall be one fold and one shepherd” (John X.16). This is, however, not all. As people are converted to the true religion, the society’s values should begin at some point to undergo transformation, increasingly reflecting Catholic wisdom. When a sufficient majority of Catholics emerge in a society, then it will finally be possible — and obligatory — to bring the political regime to a formal profession of Faith, which would be reflected in all legislation. If Catholic bishops, clergy, and laity in this country had followed a program of this kind, the condition of the Faith and culture here would have been significantly better. But they did not: thus, we arrive at our central thesis. The leaders of the Church in the United States of America gave mostly uncritical approval to a theory of government and society known as “Americanism,” a form of liberalism which masquerades as a continuation of Western, even Catholic, socio-political traditions.* In its original form, it does have pseudo-Christian appearances — appearances, but not the substance. Its substance consists of the principles of the modern world, the principles in revolt against Catholic wisdom. Deceived by these appearances, American Catholics and their leaders believed that the American ethos was congruent with that of the Church. By seeking accommodation with American culture, the Catho lic Church in the United States made itself vulnerable to the poisonous liberalism at the foundation of that culture. Given that the important Catholic clergy in this country have continuously endorsed the liberal principles of American culture, the preconciliar policy of rapprochement with that culture is in no small way responsible for the present-day debacle in Church and society alike. When America’s cultural liberalism became more open, more pronounced, more consistently logical with the passage of time, Catholics’ prior conditioning prevented them from stopping the degeneration. They were rendered incapable of even a proper diagnosis of its causes, which lay in just those American cultural ideas they had been taught to cherish as “beneficial” to the work of the Church in this country. In other words, Catholics’ esteem of the liberal principles behind that political ideology henceforth referred to as “civic Americanism” contributed much to American cultural decline in the 20th century and stymied an effective counteraction (as it still does). More than two centuries of “going along to get along” also predisposed American Catholics ultimately to accept the extreme anti-Catholic consequences of their culture’s liberalism after Vatican II. “THE CENTRAL TRADITION OF AMERICAN CATHOLICISM, the tradition personified in the great prelates from John Carroll to Francis Spellman [and, indeed, right up to the late Cardinal Bernardin], was contained in the constant and passionate assertion that Catholicism and Americanism blended happily together and rounded each other out,” wrote a liberal Catholic historian, David J. O’Brien, in “American Catholicism and American Religion” (1971). “Heedless of the difficulties that disturbed more thoughtful nativists and perceptive European visitors, American Catholics loved their Church and their country, insisted upon total allegiance to both, and either ignored criticism or regarded all challenges as wrongheaded and prejudiced.” With these words, O’Brien sounded a theme that will resonate throughout the following pages. Almost all that has been written about American Catholicism and its relation to American culture is colored with acceptance of the latter’s values. The authors of these works hardly dispute that the Church is in synchronization with the culture: they trumpet it; they glory in it. Behold this excerpt from Theodore Maynard’s introduction to The Story of American Catholicism (1941): “The Catholic Church in truth is the natural upholder of American institutions.... Its fundamental doctrine that all men are essentially equal can be the only solid foundation of democracy. The Church powerfully helps to preserve the intellectual atmosphere needed for the continued life of the American – 4 – Charles M. de Nunzio: Variations on a Theme, Op. 45 [CC&AC Draft Edition II-1b (1998)] idea.....” Yet, Maynard reluctantly acknowledged that many American Catholics were “rather too American” in their embrace of materialism and a parochial isolationism. Fr. Greeley’s The Catholic Experience provides an even more dramatic testimony of this acculturation and its ultimate fruits. His book is intriguing because it agrees with the thesis of the present writing — except that Greeley supported precisely what is condemned herein, and vice versa. In certain respects, the thoughts of one’s adversaries can be most instructive. “Far from lacking impressive traditions,” wrote Greeley, “the American Catholic Church has a history filled with great men and profound ideas. Much of what the church universal [sic] has come to accept in the renewal of the Second Vatican Council was anticipated for at least one hundred years in the lives and teaching of the giants of the American Church.” Greeley viewed American Catholic history as a struggle between two views on acclimation to American society, the prevailing view being in favor of it. “Just as historians in the United States point out that the liberal tradition in this country is the older tradition and that authentic conservatism [i.e. in American terms] consists essentially of conserving this liberal tradition, so the Americanizing tradition within the Church has on its side both seniority and the approbation of being the ‘official’ position.” On the other hand, the anti-acclimation posture was far more kindred to the mindset of the orthodox pre-Vatican II Popes because of the “narrow, suspicious, defensive, and reactionary mentality” which Greeley saw as common to both. In a strange way, the liberal priest-sociologist-author was correct: truth is “narrow” — God either revealed something or He did not, and Revelation has its logical consequences in the practical order. Furthermore, one is right to view an anti-Catholic culture with defensive suspicion and to react accordingly. The best thing Catholics could do, ultimately, is to Catholicize the culture. That was not done here, so souls are now going to perdition en masse as a result. “American Catholics were the pioneers in adjusting to a pluralist society,” observed Msgr. Joseph Moody approvingly (1963 essa y “A Catholic View of Contemporary Conflict”). “Just as they showed the possibility and advantages of living under a republican and democratic form of government, so they were to demonstrate to their European confreres the merits of pluralism,” especially with their bishops’ crucial promotion of Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty over the following two years. Rarely, if ever, was there an American Catholic leader who openly refused to sing the high hosannas of American “pluralism,” a word used to characterize the multiplicity of religious sects in a society where none are given official preference. Our society’s pluralism, American Catholics constantly held, was a “blessing” in the wake of the tremendous anti-Catholic hostility that has been a ongoing problem. As Dr. Rao noted, it has been a rather dubious blessing. The Pluralist way of life emasculates th e Catholic, rendering him impotent. It tells him that he can think but not act, since acting in line with one’s thought could be divisive in our world of inevitable and growing diversity. Pluralism, at least in theory, can permit that Chr ist be King over an individual but never over the world in which the heart, mind and will of an individual are truly formed.... [It obliges a man] to construct a dike against all energetic action founded upon reason and faith and to declare an introspective sterility to be the normal condition of life [whence follows, for example, “an obsession with contraception”].... American Catholicism was allowed to make material gains while abandoning its right and duty to refashion American society in the way of truly Christian culture. Catholics practiced their Faith, but in such a way as to avoid disrupting the common consensus of American society at large. What this effectively meant is that they would be the “salt of the sacristy” on Sunday mornings but nothing more. Devoid of intellectual vitality, religion became the focus of the sentiments. The salt forfeited its savor, which is why it is now being trampled underfoot. SYNOPTICAL OVERTURE OF THE CHAPTERS. The appeal of a pluralistic State to the American Catholic mind was more than merely pragmatic. The spiritual descendants of Archbishop John Carroll, first Catholic bishop of the United States, were heirs to a theoretical “justification” of religious liberty that he himself inherited from the first colonizers of his native Maryland. These Englishmen themselves received it from Jesuit priests serving their mother country as far back as the late 16th century. They were eager to accept this doctrine because they were tired of being persecuted by the governments of English monarchs Elizabeth I and James I: from their ordeals, they came to the false conclusion that any established religion only produces hardship and insincerity. – 5 – Charles M. de Nunzio: Variations on a Theme, Op. 45 [CC&AC Draft Edition II-1b (1998)] Archbishop Carroll did more than pass down the regrettable legacy of English Catholic predilection for religious liberty. The Catholic hierarchy in America was founded soon after the Republic itself, and Carroll put his stamp of approval upon the principles of American politics, some of which are in definite opposition to the spirit of the Catholic Faith. As the new Union’s few Catholics were mostly of British descent, they continued to view their non- Catholic society just as two centuries of their ancestors had done. Thus, they fit in readily. Unfortunately, Catholics in America came to accept the revolutionary events of 1775-1791 as a high point of human history, a great advancement in civilization. Nothing could be further from the truth. Christian (i.e. Catholic) civilization had been in gradual decline since about the year 1300, a decline that accelerated with the Protestant revolt after 1517. The next stage in the revolt was the rejection of the person of our Lord, Jesus Christ, as God and Savior: the “gospel” of Deism was spread by Freemasonry, while John Locke promoted a “social contract” theory of politics that appeared to embody key aspects of English constitutional tradition while effectively demoting God to a peripheral role in the affairs of State — a political vision accepted by the consensus of influential American “Founding Fathers.” To be sure, the British monarchy had discredited its own authority when it rejected the Catholic Church in the 16th century, but the Americans of 1776 implemented a false remedy, more liberalism. The revolt against Divine order did not stop there, of course, so that in time, the ideals associated with the early American republic were no longer called “liberal,” but “conservative.” American Catholics manifested that “total allegiance” to both Church and State discussed by O’Brien (in the quotation cited earlier) in the same way as their fellow citizens. Their sense of patriotism was not just the rightful love of the land of one’s birth or adoption, but a full-fledged participation in what some writers correctly call the “American civil religion,” or more correctly still, a systematic form of virtual idolatry. Devised as a hero-worship cult of the “Founding Fathers” shortly after the Revolution to give Americans some kind of basis for a sense of common identity, this pseudo-religion grew in scope and prestige, reaching its peak with the Second World War. It was forcefully discarded by the draft-card-burning hippie student protesters in the 1960's and by most American institutions in the following decade and has never returned in full force. Obser vers like the astute Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville were already indicating widespread Catholic compromises even in the early years of our nation’s history. The major bishops of the early and middle 19th century followed Archbishop Carroll’s lead in their sympathy with civic Americanism, something they relied upon as a key weapon in self-defense against the hostile (yet not always baseless) attacks of anti-Catholic “Nativists.” The bishops did differ, though, on the extent to which Catholic accommodation with American society could be reflected within the institutional Church itself. Two influential ex-Transcendentalist converts, Fr. Isaac Hecker (founder of the Paulists and a subjectivist “American” spirituality) and lay journalist Orestes Brownson, had differing opinions on the good will and convertibility of the American people, but they both uncritically accepted the notion that the American political system was compatible with the Faith in all respects. The bishops were placed in an uncomfortable position with the American publication of Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors in early 1865. There were, however, none found to disagree with their twisted consensus: the document had no practical applicability to this country, supposedly because one had to understand the European context from which those ideas were abstracted. (They seem to have forgotten that in Encyclical Letters, bad ideas are condemned in principle and therefore local or regional context is irrelevant.) This little-known episode is truly indicative of the state of American Catholicism throughout its history. After the Civil War ended in 1865, American culture began undergoing a dramatic transformation. Before 1820, there had not been much of an “American” culture; virtually all of the elements associated with that term were produced by artificial means, owing to the considerable differences between localities. Its first construction came from the early Republic’s myth-makers and wordsmiths like Noah Webster (whose name graces the famous dictionary). Later, especially after the Union victory, mass media and technology-driven commerce forged enough of a sense of common identity that people began looking upon the United States as a single nation, as opposed to its original design as a federation of states. “American culture” veritably became the sum of the products of mass media, technology, and commerce — and it still is. Meanwhile, the original understandings of civic Americanist ideas gave way to more liberal interpretations, because the logic of liberalism does not stop for considerations of morality or common sense — these could only appear arbitrary to the liberal mind. The abstract statement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” inspired the abolitionist movement, which in turn inspired the first stirring of the feminist movement. In the 20th century, – 6 – Charles M. de Nunzio: Variations on a Theme, Op. 45 [CC&AC Draft Edition II-1b (1998)] there appeared a host of destructive movements all based on civic Americanist values like liberalism, egalitarianism, individualism, and materialism; one of the most overlooked (and disastrous) of these is the rise of a formal “teenage” subculture. Conservatives complained about these developments but did not see that they logically flowed from the liberal principles of American society. Then and now, conservatives fail to understand that civic Americanism is a selfcontradiction which the liberals resolve by purging all vestiges of Christianity from American life. The middle of the 19th century saw the beginning of the massive influx of Catholic immigrants: mainly Irish and German at first, but by century’s end, other European nationals began arriving in large numbers. The Irish had less trouble acclimating to American society than the others because their homeland had been under English Protestant rule for centuries; hence, they knew both the language and something of the culture. Irish Catholic clergymen had also been schooled in Lockean political philosophy since the late 18th century. Unsurprisingly, some of the bishops of Irish extraction became fervent in their embrace of the American Way to the point of advocating it as an ideal, and at the end of the 19th century, these called themselves “Americanists.” While two bishops of Irish descent opposed the Americanists, the main opposition came from the bishops of German background. With good reason, opponents saw the orientations of the Americanists as a dangerous flirtation with liberal and heretical ideas, and their arguments represented the first wide-scale exposure of American Catholics to a more integrally Catholic mindset. From 1884 to 1899 a series of high-profile clashes occurred, the likes of which were never seen before or after in American Catholic history. These culminated in Leo XIII’s condemnation of certain ideas, collectively named “Americanism,” which were traceable in principle to the heterodox theories of Fr. Hecker. The onset of the 20th century saw a period of continued Americanization of the Church in the United States, but it proceeded much more quietly than previously. The immigrants’ children and grandchildren developed ties to this country and its culture, and they often neglected or repudiated their families’ native traditions — the only traces of Catholic culture this country ever had. The ethnic enclaves were fair imitations of the “old country,” but only those who were not seduced by American liberalism saw them as preferable to the outside society. The “enclosed” immigrants did not spread their more integral vision of the Faith, but kept it to themselves. Catholics who abandoned the enclaves were the ones who had accepted American culture at face value. By the years between World War II and Vatica n II, the liberalism of American culture had made alarming inroads into whatever was still “Christian” (in the lamely generic Protestant sense of that word) about this society. Catholics were, more often than not, drifting along with the Hollywood-induced sentimentality of the time. After the war, many became atomistic middle-class suburbanites like everyone else. If ever there was a time for Catholic Action, this was it, and some Catholics put forth a valiant effort in this regard such as was rarely seen before in American history, especially in the intellectual arena. (Even the fight of the late 19th-century Germans was as much ethnic as it was religious.) Expositions of the incompatibilities between the Faith and the surrounding cultural ideals were understandably ignored by most American Catholics, who accepted a compartmentalized practice of their religion as normal. This approach, after all, brought “the best of both worlds,” smells-and-bells along with “the blessings of liberty” — the only approach allowing a Catholic to “feel good” in an American society that was progressively degrading long before the 1960's. Before Pope John XXIII was “inspired” in 1959 to call the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) to come to a new “understanding” with the modern world, there were not too many American Catholics who reflected upon the true depth of the clash between their religion and that modern world. (Most who did quietly left the Church, and these were a multitude.) The “be nice” rhetoric of John XXIII and the tenor of his Council changed that very quickly. People began noticing the dichotomy, all right, but the discontent of most of these was not with modern society but rather the “backwards,” “fossilized” Catholic Church. Vatican II was the Council that saw the triumph of the dubious 400-yearold Anglo-American theory about Church-State relations. Dignitatis Humanae, a virtual manifesto of this aspect of civic Americanism, passed into the appearances of Catholic teaching after two years of skillful maneuvering by American bishops and one Jesuit theologian, Fr. John Courtney Murray, who had been silenced for his heterodox views only ten years before. Ironically, by the time the Declaration on Religious Liberty was adopted, American courts had already begun to follow the logic of religious liberty into open atheism in First Amendment rulings. Just as the Council ended, so indeed did the almost 200-year reign of the “traditional” conception of civic Americanism, with its uneasy coexistence of liberal and pseudo-Christian elements. People began disregarding the latter, in favor of a more rigorous liberalism, thus hastening our societal suicide. Because of its own hopeless compromises – 7 – Charles M. de Nunzio: Variations on a Theme, Op. 45 [CC&AC Draft Edition II-1b (1998)] with the liberal ethic, however, the Catholic Church in the United States was now in no position to redress the situation, and the situation has continually worsened since. SO LONG AS ORTHODOX-MINDED CATHOLICS continue to be seduced by the illusion of the compatibility of the American ethos with their religion, they will continue to be frustrated by both the dramatic decline of our civilization and the failure of their frenzied activities to redress the situation. Too simplistically, many of these think that a full restoration of the original American ethic will once again produce the ordered, moral, “godly” society of former times. They cannot believe how liberal our society has become, and yet they still swell to the rhetoric of “liberty,” “equality,” “rugged individualism,” and “the pursuit of [material] happiness.” They do not sufficiently grasp the implications of their Faith for daily life, because they are too much in tune with a “culture” that is truly against that Faith. Some even show themselves as kindred spirits with the “Nativists” of the last century whenever someone dares to challenge their acceptance of the “American Way.” Consider what is often called the “pro-life movement,” for the way it goes about opposing abortion (the only laudable position on that issue, of course) is in many ways an apt reflection of the anti-Catholic cultural mentality into which conservative and traditional Catholics have been drawn through their Church’s age-old policy of acclimation. Defenders of the preborn often cite the Declaration of Independence to support the “right to life” that constitutes their main counterargument to legal abortion. While that right does indeed exist, the primary problem with abortion is not the taking of a human life, but it is rather the grave offense given to God by someone’s selfish usurpation of His rights over life and death — yet who among abortion opponents presents the issue in this way? There is thus a latent humanism here, whence follows a misplaced emphasis on the abortion issue: although murder is one of the “four sins crying to Heaven for vengeance,” the deeper problem here is the contraceptive mentality that creates the demand for abortion. Only conversion of the people to the true religion is the answer; without it, the outlawing of abortion will fail as surely as once did Prohibition. The “pro-life” movement suffers thus in its governing principles, but its methodology also leaves much to be desired. There is an intense sentimentality coupled with a “bottom line” mentality about the whole business (i.e. “How many babies did we save today?”) that inspires people to neglect their duties of state in favor of an activism that presents more than merely legal dangers. What “duty” does any parent have to endanger the welfare of those children who God entrusted to them personally, by presuming to be the “rescuers” of preborn strangers, thereby robbing their own children of their attention and support by activities often leading to jail and other deleterious consequences? In the activism, sentimentality, and utilitarianism, there is the imprint of American culture. Unless in their heart of hearts Catholics are actually loyal to the lifestyle that the “American Way” permits them, there is reasonable hope that careful explanations of certain long-misunderstood facts and ideas will help them begin to see our society in a more realistic light. This understanding, in turn, should lead them to redirect their actions away from unproductive socio-political endeavors that waste their time and needlessly endanger their families. Catholics are more wise to invest their energies in those areas where they can really make a difference — usually not for society at large, but for the people who matter to them the most. If so many present-day efforts to stop the flood of moral atrocities and thereby “save America” are now foundering to one degree or another (such as with the “pro-life” movement), it is because our Lord is thereby forcing us to acknowledge that He is not satisfied with “solutions” that provide only the appearances of a Christian social order while affirming liberalism in its principles. May the present volume, then, assist American readers of good will towards a clearer understanding of our culture and its relation to the Catholic Faith.
(Excerpt) Read more at charlesdenunzio.com ...
Can you please format the text. It is very hard to read.
Sorry cutting and pasting from a PDF doesn't seem to work very well, perhaps it would be easier to click on the link and read the original.
after 1517. The next stage in the revolt was the rejection of the person of our Lord, Jesus Christ, as God and Savior: the “gospel” of Deism was spread by Freemasonry, while John Locke promoted a “social contract” theory of politics that appeared to embody key aspects of English constitutional tradition while effectively demoting God to a peripheral role in the affairs of State — a political vision accepted by the consensus of influential American “Founding Fathers.”
To be sure, the British monarchy had discredited its own authority when it rejected the Catholic Church in the 16th century, but the Americans of 1776 implemented a false remedy, more liberalism. The revolt against Divine order did not stop there, of course, so that in time, the ideals associated with the early American republic were no longer called “liberal,” but “conservative".
In another De Nunzio article called "Christian Nation & Other Dubious Legends” he also had this to say about American pluralism.
“By granting all religions freedom to operate while endorsing none, the State leaves the inevitable impression that "one religion is as good as another," an implication that is actually even worse than it first seems. For such an "equality" suggests that all religions are man-made constructs, quite interchangeable with one another at will — which is simply a nicer way of saying that all religions are false. The State's official agnosticism thus spreads to the citizenry, eventually engendering movements to induce the State to profess official atheism.”
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